{"id":960457,"date":"2026-11-06T11:10:18","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T11:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/960457\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T11:10:18","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T11:10:18","slug":"clayfaces-tom-rhys-harries-got-ripped-without-cardio-use-his-classic-weight-training-simple-diet-template","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/960457\/","title":{"rendered":"Clayface’s Tom Rhys Harries Got Ripped Without Cardio \u2013 Use His Classic Weight Training & Simple Diet Template"},"content":{"rendered":"

When your next gig involves turning into an amorphous shapeshifting clay monster, you could be forgiven for questioning how much difference a few extra sets of bench<\/a> are going to make. Tom Rhys Harries, however, wanted to arrive prepped. And before the prosthetics went on, that meant putting in a fairly substantial shift in the gym.<\/p>\n

The actor, who plays Matt Hagen in DC\u2019s Clayface, reached a reported 6% body fat<\/a> for the role, according to an interview with his coach, Dan Avasilcai. But his preparation came with a complication that will sound familiar to anyone who\u2019s ever had an ambitious training plan interrupted by an uncooperative body: he was working around a substantial knee injury that took cardio off the cards.<\/p>\n

\u2018I do a lot of resistance training<\/a> and I mainly did resistance training for Clayface,\u2019 he told Men\u2019s Health US in a video breaking down his workouts<\/a>. \u2018I couldn\u2019t incorporate cardio in the way that I had in the past.\u2019<\/p>\n

His response was to adapt. He describes five days of training, splitting his work between different major muscle groups, alongside being \u2018fairly careful with what I was eating\u2019. A well-worn approach, showing that the details probably matter far less than the effort you put into the graft.<\/p>\n

For Rhys Harries, the physical preparation was part of getting his head into the job. \u2018I like feeling as prepared as possible when I start filming anything,\u2019 he tells MH US. That commitment carries over into how he talks about acting more broadly. \u2018I never want to rest on my laurels, even if that can be pretty seductive.\u2019<\/p>\n

How Tom Rhys Harries Trained for Clayface<\/p>\n

In the gym, though, ambition had to accommodate injury.<\/p>\n

He kicks off a demonstration of his favourite moves at the squat rack, where he\u2019s quick to get ahead of any comments about the lack of weight on the bar.<\/p>\n

\u2018Before anybody comes for me for having a very light bar, this is just for display and we\u2019ve done this 100 times off camera already.\u2019<\/p>\n

More useful to us than the numbers on the plates, though, is his emphasis on execution. Rhys Harries talks about prioritising a handful of good, intense sets over endless sloppy ones, and explains that he began placing a bench behind him when squatting after injuring his Achilles.<\/p>\n

\u2018You can kind of get really scared of doing certain things, which inadvertently makes it more important, I think, to try to do them, but do them properly.\u2019<\/p>\n

Squatting<\/a> to a bench or box is an excellent option when working around injury. With Harries\u2019 particular niggles, we’re not sure the benefits of this adaptation will be huge, but if it’s given him the confidence to start squatting heavily again, that alone is worth its weight in gold.<\/p>\n

The Simple Exercises Tom Rhys Harries Uses to Build Muscle<\/p>\n

His upper-body work is pretty recognisable to most gym bros. There\u2019s an incline dumbbell press, a cable row and a seated shoulder press. A nice bit of push\/pull. Movements you could find being performed in pretty much any gym, on pretty much any Monday evening.<\/p>\n

\u2018You can do so much with dumbbells<\/a>,\u2019 he tells MH US. \u2018You can do a whole thing with the right weight dumbbells.\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a point we’ve stressed emphatically ourselves<\/a>. A bit of basic kit, a few basic movements, all performed consistently and with intent, can give you more than enough to work with. You don\u2019t need to reinvent your entire exercise selection every time the bloke next to you discovers a new move from an AI slop account on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Rhys Harries is also reassuringly honest about the exercises he doesn\u2019t enjoy. Pull-ups, for instance.<\/p>\n

\u2018I really hate doing pull-ups<\/a>,\u2019 he says, while introducing the cable row.<\/p>\n

Shoulder presses have taken some warming to as well, although he\u2019s recently brought them back into his routine, favouring the seated version.<\/p>\n

The broader point here is that while some exercises are certainly more effective than others for adding muscle, there’s no gilded \u2018must-do\u2019 list when it comes to building your ideal body.<\/p>\n

Having played rugby for 15 years, he isn\u2019t coming to all this with zero training experience. He jokes that his younger efforts left him with particularly well-developed traps, without necessarily having much idea what he was doing. Anyone whose early gym education involved just copying the biggest man in the room can probably relate.<\/p>\n

What Tom Rhys Harries Ate to Get Lean for Clayface<\/p>\n

His work in the gym, though, is only one side of the coin. Good nutrition is a tremendous effort multiplier, especially when it comes to dropping body fat and chiselling out the leanest physique possible.<\/p>\n

Coach Avasilcai has spoken about where the real work went down: in the kitchen. A typical day included eggs<\/a> and salmon for breakfast, a protein bar<\/a>, chicken salad, another meal of chicken with rice and vegetables, a shake, then steak and vegetables for dinner.<\/p>\n

It might sound like a copy-and-paste version of the classic Hollywood diet, but pay attention and you’ll see this is not a small amount of food. High fats, plenty of high-volume, high-quality salads and vegetables, and simply filling gaps with shakes<\/a> and bars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The portions were no doubt tailored to Rhys Harries’ individual macronutrient needs, but this is a template you can easily steal for yourself and modify for your own goals.<\/p>\n

Follow our guide here<\/a> for more on that.<\/p>\n

Is 6% Body Fat Sustainable?<\/p>\n

The reported 6% body fat figure makes an eye-catching headline, but Rhys Harries offers some refreshingly helpful wisdom for anyone comparing their own progress with what eventually appears on screen.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s unsustainable to be in a certain kind of shape all year round,\u2019 he says. \u2018When I\u2019m working on certain things, I have like a huge support network and a lot of prep time before what you see on screen.\u2019<\/p>\n

He’s not wrong. That doesn’t mean you should follow his exact approach, but adapting the principles to fit your lifestyle and temperament is a much better starting point.<\/p>\n

In fact, his advice for those of us who probably aren’t going to have to face down Batman in the near future leaves considerably more room for real life:<\/p>\n

\u2018I think it\u2019s like finding some kind of balance with what you need to be achieving for you and your life and your lifestyle.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When your next gig involves turning into an amorphous shapeshifting clay monster, you could be forgiven for questioning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":960458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[49,48,183873,782,327876,784,407,84,237154,783,327875,273948],"class_list":["post-960457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-collection-celebrity-workouts","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-50a9b265-1cc8-421e-a0fa-8aa230325d54","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-gb","tag-shorttitle-how-tom-rhys-harries-got-shredded-without-cardio","tag-sponsored-false"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/960458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}